The Industrial City Time-Warp: Shenzhen
The Hua Qiang Bei skyline at dusk from the 20th floor of the Sichuan hotel, looking west. The tall building to the left is the 2nd highest in Shenzhen (for now) and was the site of the first electronics factory to be converted into a market, and subsequently an office tower. Its main tenant, SEG, is one of the biggest players in the neighbourhood.
When North Americans think of deindustrialization and China, we’re usually pretty quick to conclude that, since our cities have so little industry left, and so much of what we buy comes with a “made in China” sticker on it, then the new industrial zones, like Shenzhen, in the Pearl River Delta, must be chock full of factories working around the clock. But deindustrialization’s running strong in China, too, in cities that were first industrialized just a few decades ago. Like a time warp, Shenzhen and other places have sped through an industrial cycle that took more than a century to complete in Europe and North America.
The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone was China’s first experiment of the type, decreed by Deng Xiaoping in 1980. The former collection of sleepy fishing and farming villages, just north of Hong Kong’s New Territories hit a population of 1 million in 1991, and now counts 14 million. The role played by the city of Shenzhen, which was in the mid 1980s the focus of enormous investments in manufacturing (most of which were made by Hong Kong entrepreneurs, as that city shed its secondary industry), has shifted towards services and distribution. Shenzhen’s now a sprawling complex of offices, shopping, and apartments, punctuated by a series of “high-high-high-end” (to quote some planners) shopping malls and increasingly gigantic central business districts, with nary a factory in sight. So what happened to the industrial areas?
Restaurant workers taking a break in Hua Qiang Bei, Shenzhen, China.
The Hua Qiang Bei neighbourhood has made an extremely rapid transition from manufacturing zone to a distribution and shopping hub, buzzing with street life and activity. Just four metro stops from the Luo Hu/Lo Wu shopping complex so dear to Hong Kongers and tourists, this slice of fantastic urban life reveals just how fertile such deindustrializing spaces can be as settings for economic activity and islands of bustling urbanity in a sea of malls, corporate campuses, and well-groomed apartment complexes.
A rice field until 1987, Hua Qiang Bei rapidly industrialised in the late 1980s when free land was given to high-tech companies. By 1992, the district was built-out, a checkerboard of warehouses, factories, and worker dormitories. As outlying areas of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the rest of Guangdong province became more attractive to manufacturers (plentiful labour force, improved infrastructure) high-tech firms increasingly shifted their Hua Qiang Bei facilities towards distribution and sale. By the mid 1990s, other retailers had flocked to the area, and Hua Qiang Bei was firmly established as one of Shenzhen’s best destinations, especially for consumer electronics. This market, one of the largest in China, is part of a fascinating network of high-tech production firms, shipping companies, and distributors, who all converge on a few city blocks.
Out behind the largest of Hua Qiang Bei’s electronics markets. The neighbourhood is a major distribution hub for electronics retailers across China, as well as an important destination for business and personal consumers.
With success, though, comes attention, which begets redevelopment. So far, Shenzhen’s planners have made few interventions; improving the sidewalks and landscaping, adding bridges and tunnels to cross the major arterial roads that surround the area, and beginning to introduce underground retail areas in connection with Hua Qiang Bei’s two metro stops. It’s uncertain though, with multiple metro lines set to converge in the neighbourhood, and the scale of apartment towers, electronics retailers, and department stores becoming ever larger, if its fine grained urbanity will persevere for too many more years. Over the next few weeks, I’ll post a few more photos of Hua Qiang Bei, hoping to capture its bustle, mayhem, and excitement.
Old factory apartment housing, still lively and densely-inhabited. Hua Qiang Bei is now a fairly well-regarded middle-class neighbourhood, particularly in its northeastern and northwestern sections.
Desmond Bliek, Urbanphoto’s newest contributor, is an M.A. candidate in Geography at McGill University in Montreal. He is currently in China exploring the effects of deindustrialization in Shenzhen and other cities.
Tags: Business, Exploring the City, Gentrification, Redevelopment, Shenzhen, Urban Design
